La Vie en Rose
Part 1: After the detonation of Cord Lane, we booked it with the survivors (about 31 people including Kries, Petra, Jack, and Straud). We were aiming to skirt around the forest of the Carved People and end up in Rathdrum, but as we were travelling, we were pursued by Silver Shirts. During the ensuing battle, Straud revealed that he believed there was a tracker within one of his two cybernetic implants. He had Alder perform an impromptu lung removal, and then he had his leg implant removed as well. The lung proved to contain a bomb, and the leg implant had the tracker in question. We managed to ditch the Silver Shirts, and Petra agreed to lead us to her people so that we could get shelter for the non-combatant members of Cord Lane (and hopefully offload Lady Kries, who is not exactly "helpful" in a firefight). We decided to make camp and rest before heading for Charon, main settlement of the Carved People. During the rest, Idith waffled over whether to return Straud's lung enhancement to him. After much hemming and hawing, she finally was able to make a deal with him. In exchange for allowing her to disassemble and examine the lung, he would be under party protection until a new replacement lung could be installed. That settled, everyone laid down to rest, but in the night, Morp Glaggleston was horrifically cleaved in two by a giant blackberry bush. Part 2: We all attempted to subdue the blackberry bush, with mixed success, when a woman arrived (riding within another bush, apparently). She said her name was Sharnell, and that she was a representative of the Carved People. The Green Voice, the leader of the Carved People who spoke through the forest, had apparently taken it into her mind to go to war. She had ejected her Son Paramour from her company, and she had uprooted her entire forest and was now on a murderous rampage heading straight for Cord Lane. Sharnell and the other Carved People were trying to round up people and get them behind the front line of danger. They were also trying to subdue rogue plants that had become hostile. Myert Morglestein was just an unfortunate freak victim of circumstance. However, she claimed that if we tossed his pieces into a different bush, they might be able to heal him. So, we fed him to the bush and we're still waiting to see the results. After following Sharnell back to her camp, we spoke with Jordan and Pam. Jordan is the apparent leader of the outfit. While talking with him and speculating about what had gone awry with the Green Voice, the Son Paramour (a disembodied Ghoul head named Harold) revealed himself to us. He explained that the Green Voice was actually an AI Overseer named Diana who had been in charge of maintaining nursery vaults across the country. As a young man, Harold had been raised by her. After his travels, becoming a ghoul, and developing a somewhat symbiotic relationship with a tree called Bob, he decided to return to the nursery where he had been raised. He offered to show Diana the world, starting with the only other active nursery she knew of (the Vault that was near the Carved People). When she arrived with him, she saw that the people she had aided from afar were under attack by the Silver Shirts. When they used nuclear weapons against her children, she decided that any outsiders did not deserve to live. She, Harold, and Bob, got into an argument about what should be done. Harold thought that war was not the answer, but Bob sided with Diana, and they kicked Harold out. Now, with Bob's ability to influence plants (apparently he's a leader amongst foliage) Diana has the power to use her intellect and Bob's plant manipulation to wage war as a giant walking Vault/Forest. Now, our goal, with Harold's help, is to try and convince Bob, Diana, or both, to give humanity a second chance.